FRONTLINE - Israel's Next War ? (PBS) They do not believe in peace talks. They do not want to share the land. They are well armed and are carrying out increasingly violent attacks, even targeting innocent civilians. They are members of Israel's militant far right, and they are threatening to become Israel's next big problem

POWERFUL FORCES seem to be laying the ground-work for staging a “third party” rebellion under their control. Don’t let them lead good patriotic Americans astray. Here’s the story you need to know about. You won’t read it anywhere else..

By Michael Collins Piper

Grass-roots Americans — fed up with corrupt and incestuous Republican-and Democratic-politics-as-usual — would love to see a genuine “third” party or independent movement rise up to throw the rascals out and restore the Constitution, bring back fiscal sanity and put an end to senseless imperial wars of conquest around the globe.

However, what many of those grass-roots Americans do not recognize is that there is — even now — a not-too covert effort afoot to bring some sort of “new” party into being in time for the 2012 presidential election. The problem is that those working to conjure up this “new” movement are the very people responsible for the mess that America is in today.

In fact, elements working behind the scenes — using the self-appointed “mainstream media” as their megaphone — seem to be setting the stage to spring some sort of “centrist,” “bipartisan” or “coalition”-type opposition movement on the American people.

Americans will be told that this is the solution to the gridlock and partisan squabbling now plaguing Washington and that they finally have a “real alternative” to those bickering Democrats and Republicans who’ve brought morass and malaise to the American system.

The recent rise of a “third” party in Britain — the Liberal Democrats — now part of a new coalition government in partnership with the Conservative (or “Tory”) Party — is being hailed as an example Americans can follow, in the tradition of our so-called “Mother Country.”

The American people do need an alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans. But right now they need to know that the “solution” being set in place is not a real solution at all.Here’s the story, one that you’ve never heard presented anywhere else before: an assembly of diverse material that demonstrates clearly that there is at work an effort to hoodwink people and lead them into a trap that will ensure that the elite retain control in the face of expanding public awareness that there’s something wrong in Washington.

The truth is that one of the primary reasons that the mass media—including The Washington Post and The New York Times —on an almost daily basis has been hyping the so-called “tea party” movement is that these elite media powers want to keep the pot boiling. That’s evidently part of the bigger agenda in the campaign to create a new political movement that will be under the control of the big money interests.

In fact, although few grass-roots tea party supporters know it, a major player behind the initial “from the top” orchestration of the tea party phenomenon was Grover Norquist, a figure in high-level Republican and conservative circles who was recruited some years ago into the ranks of Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The CFR is the New York-based affiliate of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, the de facto foreign policy arm of the Rothschild banking dynasty whose tentacles reach into the privately owned money monopoly known as the Federal Reserve System, which controls the American economic system.

Likewise, another power behind the sudden burst of the tea party into national prominence was Fox News, the centerpiece of the global media empire of pro-Zionist hard-liner Rupert Murdoch, whose own rise to international influence came as a result of the sponsorship of the Rothschild dynasty, a point explored in some depth in various aspects in this author’s works The Judas Goats and The New Babylon.

So while there are many good people involved in the tea party, it might be said that there are some suspicious elements at work, utilizing the movement for their own insidious purposes. And one of those purposes, it does appear, is the orchestrated “reform” of the two-party system. But real reform is not what these intriguers have in mind.

Why, some might ask, would the power elite — who have benefited from a strangle hold on the traditional two-party system — want to bring it toppling down?

The answer is simple: The power elite recognize that there is widespread discontent among American voters, and those high-level manipulators want to ensure that they are able to contain and corral that discontent, channeling it into a “controlled opposition,” even if that means setting up a new “centrist” party or movement to do it.

At the same time, of course, they want to be certain that they can direct the internal politics of both the Democratic and Republican parties, making certain that legitimate challengers to politics as usual are kept on the sidelines and marginalized.

That is why, for example, The Washington Post and its sister publication, Newsweek, which is now on the auction block, have been promoting the political fortunes of Sarah Palin, advancing her move toward the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Mrs. Palin is clearly perceived by the elite interests who control the Post as a “blocking candidate,” who has the capacity to frustrate the ambitions of a genuine maverick Republican such as Ron Paul, whose refusal—unlike Palin—to endorse American imperial globalism and warmongering is considered a potential danger should he make further advances in the GOP arena.

So Sarah Palin is clearly being used as a shameless tool. Yet, paradoxically, should Mrs. Palin capture the GOP nod, this would further the elitist aim of saying that the Republican Party was now fully in the control of “extreme” elements and that “middle of the road” GOP voters should begin looking elsewhere for a “centrist” alternative since, of course, most Republicans would find it hard to stomach voting for Barack Obama or any other likely nominee of the hated socialists in the Democratic Party.

One point that is little noticed and hardly mentioned regarding the “liberal” elements of the Democratic Party is the fact that many supporters of Israel within the tightly knit group of families and financial interests who control the major print and broadcast media in America are concerned that there is a growing opposition to Israel within the “left wing” of the Democratic Party. Polls consistently demonstrate that Republicans across the country are far more strongly in support of Israel than Democrats, who for many years were considered the bedrock of support for Israel in the American political arena. Not so these days.

And now that all of the key Jewish lobby organizations, including the World Jewish Congress, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, have loudly condemned the Obama administration for its perceived hostility and intransigence toward Israel, the concerns about Obama and the Democratic “left” have been exacerbated even further.

Polls show that 27 percent of Israelis consider Obama to be “anti-Semitic.”

A hint that there were high-level forces pulling the rug out from under Obama and laying the groundwork for even more substantial political convulsions on the national level came when David S. Broder opined in The Washington Post on Jan. 21 that the election of Republican Scott Brown to succeed the late Edward M. Kennedy in the Massachusetts Senate race was “a vote of no confidence” for the president and “Democratic controlled Washington.” Broder concluded by saying that “Obama may recover . . . but it will take a significant change of direction to turn things around.”

While most Americans have never heard of Broder (a longtime member of the CFR), it is no exaggeration to say that, “When David Broder speaks, people listen.” Broder’s Post column is considered “must” reading among establishment insiders in Washington. He is regularly hailed as the “dean” of America’s political pundits.

While publicly identified as being the fiefdom of the Meyer-Graham publishing enterprise, the Washington Post Company, which is perceived to be a tightly held family concern, is actually an American extension — like the CFR — of the global empire of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Rothschild-connected holding companies and, in particular, longtime Rothschild family associate, Nebraska-based billionaire Warren Buffett, have a considerably greater stake in the Post Company than even the Meyer-Graham family.

All of this having been said, it is critical to understand that the Post, as one of the foremost media powers on American soil, has been in the forefront of propagating the theme that some sort of “centrist” challenge to the two-party system as now constituted is in order.

For example, on Feb. 25, the Rothschild-dominated Post featured a prominently placed item entitled “Washington rancor angers bipartisan town.” The article proclaimed that even in Newtown, Pa.—one of the famed well-to-do “Mainline” suburbs of Philadelphia where so-called middle-of-the-road or centrist Democrats and Republicans alike have always competed on an even level in local, state and federal elections—disgust with partisan gridlock in Washington is growing steadily.

The Post asserted that the situation in Newtown is reflected all across the country in like-minded communities said by the Post to reflect “what political strategists consider the disaffected middle.”

What this means, effectively, in the carefully crafted code words utilized by the Post, is that many people consider both the Democrats and the Republicans to be “too extreme”—the Democrats perceived to be “too left wing” and the Republicans to be “too right wing.”

Putting aside the argument as to what constitutes either “left” or “right” politically, the point is that the Post is suggesting, as it has repeatedly in recent months, joined by The NewYork Times, that Americans are looking for a “middle ground” or “centrist” alternative.

On May 2, the Post — which heretofore never had anything good to say about relatively larger-scale “independent” or “third party” efforts, ranging from those of George Wallace, Ross Perot or Pat Buchanan to Ralph Nader — featured a lead item in its much-read Sunday opinion section raising the question: “Should the two party system be challenged?”

That the Post would even open up the question for discussion is very telling. While opinions, both pro- and con-, were presented, the words of one commentator in particular, Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California’s Unruh Institute of Politics, reflected precisely the tone of recent and notably repetitive Washington Post commentary and reportage regarding the issue.

While Schnur says that the emergence of a third party is unlikely “anytime soon,” he suggests that “angry centrists” have “the best opportunity they’ve had in many, many years” over the next six months to begin laying the foundation for “the need for a new, centrist political entity that will free the country from the grip of liberal and conservative extremists.” He points out that a bevy of “besieged middle-of-the-road political figures could conceivably remake the American political landscape.”

As examples, Schnur cites such figures as longtime liberal Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who is now actually being seriously challenged for renomination by a candidate perceived to be even more liberal than even Lincoln herself; Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who gave up running for renomination in the GOP primary facing a serious conservative challenge only to find his reelection endangered by a fight for renomination in the Democratic Party; and Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who, failing badly in his bid for the GOP Senate nomination against a conservative challenger, has now, to great fanfare in the “mainstream” media, announced his campaign as an independent.

And it’s probably no coincidence that Schnur should be one echoing the Post’s propaganda line in so many respects. In 2008, Schnur was the communications director for vaunted “maverick” Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee that year, who, just four years before, was being touted as a possible partyjumping running mate for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.

Perhaps not surprisingly,considering his own conflicts over the years with more “conservative” elements in his own party, McCain himself faces a renomination challenge—from the “right”—from former Rep. J. C. Hayward.

What is particularly interesting in that another featured commentator in the Post’s give-and-take on the issue was former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said that a third party challenge was “not a path America should follow.”

What Gingrich did not say, however, was something that Washington insiders do know: the fact that Gingrich has been privately “mentioning” to figures in the capital city’s power elite that he is considering picking retiring Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana (who — like Gingrich — is another member of the CFR) as his running mate if he (Gingrich) manages to procure the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nomination. This is apparently the “Gingrich Solution” to partisan gridlock, some sort of “bipartisan, middle-of-the-road” approach.

Gingrich: Front Man for Shady, Shadowy Interests

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is still considerably influential in high-level political circles in no small part because of the fact that his substantial political and public relations enterprises have been bankrolled by Sheldon Adelson, an international gambling tycoon.

Known for his devotion to the interests of Israel, Adelson, said to be the third-richest American, has been described by the web site of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise as “the world’s richest Jew.”

It should also be noted that Gingrich benefited from the lucrative Israeli-connected intrigues of his second wife, Marianne, whom he divorced some years ago, and who was on the payroll of the Israel Export Development Company (IEDCO), which was promoting the importation into the United States of Israeli products — even as Gingrich was using his influence as a member of Congress to advance U.S.-Israeli trade.

The aforementioned IEDCO was an operation run by mob-connected Larry Silverstein, the billionaire owner of theWorld Trade Center towers at the time of the 9-11 tragedy, best known for his now infamous urging — “pull it” — in reference to the trade center’s Building 7 which was deliberately imploded, a point that 9-11 researchers have documented relentlessly.

PICTURED: Sheldon Adelson and Larry Silverstein are two powerful Zionist figures who have bankrolled the intrigues of GOP kingpin Newt Gingrich

And while Gingrich has not yet made any major formal steps toward running for the presidency, he maintains considerable influence in Washington (See accompanying story)

That Gingrich should mention Bayh as a possible running mate is very interesting in the context of an orchestrated toppling of the two-party system by the powerful financial interests that control the mass media — the global money lords who are the forces dominating the Federal Reserve System.

In fact, on the very day that The New York Times, another major voice for the barons of finance, featured a commentary by Bayh entitled “Why I’m Leaving the Senate,” in which Bayh complained of “strident partisanship” and “unyielding ideology,” former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, one of those much-touted “centrists” who is now running as an independent for governor of Rhode Island, was also featured on that same page in the Times predicting: “Expect Democratic and GOP dysfunction to lead to a third party.”

Chafee wrote of the fact that, in 2001, pollster John Zogby told the Republican Senate caucus that “There is a burgeoning centrist third party waiting to be formed.”

In Chafee’s summary of Zogby’s words, “Either party could make a strategic decision to capture the center . . . or both could wait for a third party to fill the vacuum.” For his own part, Chafee wrote:

With our hopes for a post-partisan era still unmet, I say to Senator Bayh: Welcome to the club of independents who are looking for a better way to serve. Before long, we centrists may even come together to define the third party that Mr. Zogby foresaw in 2001.

It has happened before. In 1856, my former party ran a credible presidential campaign just two years after its founding. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln won the White House under that new Republican banner. If my friend Evan Bayh can walk away from the United States Senate and not look back, more power to him. But my guess is, he has a modern-day reprise of the Lincoln victory in mind.

It may be no coincidence that Bayh’s name happens to be one of those popping up in the type of scenario discussed here. In 1999 Bayh was a participant in the Sintra, Portugal convocation of the annual meeting of the Bilderberg group, the secretive international policymaking power bloc created jointly in the mid-1950s by the combined forces of the Rothschild dynasty and their American satellites in the Rockefeller family network.

Is Bayh now slated with other key “centrists,” who are said to be “fed up with partisan gridlock,” to be part of a phony “third party” conjured up by the power elite? That question remains to be answered. But as the overview of the continuing propaganda campaign for a third party appearing in the controlled media demonstrates, it appears that something is definitely afoot.

MAINSTREAM NY NEWSPAPER CONFIRMS AFP REPORT ON CENTRIST THIRD PARTYWhen AMERICAN FREE PRESS recently presented a special four-page report assembling evidence that high-level forces have been setting the stage to spring some sort of ‘centrist,’ ‘bipartisan’ or ‘coalition’-type third party movement on the American people, AFP’s critics said this was ‘another crazy conspiracy theory.’ Click here to read this story.

When AMERICAN FREE PRESS recently presented a special four-page report assembling evidence that high-level forces have been setting the stage to spring some sort of “centrist,” “bipartisan” or “coalition”-type third party movement on the American people, AFP’s critics said this was “another crazy conspiracy theory.”

However, one of The New York Times’ most influential in-house columnists—Thomas L. Friedman—revealed Oct. 3 that there is an ongoing effort to set up a new “centrist” third party in time for the 2012 election.

The new party will shun both the “liberal left” and the “conservative right” and stand for “centrist, bipartisan” policies. Or, should that be tri-partisan?Friedman’s column is part of an increasingly open campaign by monopolistic media controllers to conjure up a “centrist” rebellion in America, even to the point of launching a third party to vanquish both liberal Barack Obama—presuming he is re-nominated by the Democratic Party—and a “conservative” Republican challenger.

AFP warned this “centrist” movement would be a classic “controlled opposition,” dominated by the very big money forces—here and abroad —in the Rothschild banking dynasty’s sphere of influence that have controlled both major parties through their stranglehold over major media outlets shaping public opinion.

Friedman’s column was titled bluntly: “Third party rising.” He wrote: “There is a revolution brewing in the country, and it is not just on the right wing but in the radical center.”

Friedman described “two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast,” working to build third party movements that the columnist said would “challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady decline.”

Friedman added that Obama had not been a failure but that Obama “probably did the best he could do, and that’s the point.” In Friedman’s overrated estimation, “The best our current two parties can produce today— in the wake of the worst existential crisis in our economy and environment in a century—is sub-optimal, even when one party had a huge majority.”

He added: “Sub-optimal is OK for ordinary times, but these are not ordinary times” (his emphasis). Instead, he wrote: “We need to stop waiting for Superman and start building a super-consensus to do the super-hard stuff we must do now.”

To elaborate, the columnist quoted Larry Diamond, a Stanford University political scientist, who said: “We basically have two bankrupt parties bankrupting the country.” Friedman concluded, basing his opinion on Diamond’s views: “We have to rip open this two-party duopoly and have it challenged by a serious third party. . . .We need a third party on the stage of the next presidential debate to look Americans in the eye and say: ‘These two parties are lying to you. . . .’ ”

Now, adding further to AFP’s informed speculation about high-level maneuvering by the media-political elite toward a “centrist” third party, the day after the 2010 elections, The New York Times featured a commentary by retiring Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.) calling for his own party to “grab the center,” no matter that “extremes of both parties will be disappointed.”

Bayh proclaimed, “The vast center yearning for progress will applaud.” The significance? In AFP’s original report, AFP pinpointed a variety of evidence that Bayh—a known participant in the Bilderberg group—was being touted as a likely key player in the new centrist party venture.

To underscore the point that there is a growing “moderate consensus” that could emerge in the 2012 elections, The New York Times featured an amazing story on its front page on Oct. 8 entitled “Some in GOP find soft spot for Bill Clinton.”

Many Republicans with a deep animus for President Obama find their hearts aflutter with the memory of a former leader. He was a compassionate conservative, a guy who cared about free trade, a man who reached across the aisle. He is the husband of the secretary of state.”

The Times article added that such august “conservative” Republican leaders as Mormon icon Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) were among those praising Clinton. Although former Sen.Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was expelled as Senate majority leader for having made friendly remarks about ex-segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), Lott was quoted as saying: “You know with Clinton the chemistry was right. He was a good old boy from Arkansas. I was a good old boy from Mississippi.”

Even so-called conservative firebrand Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), considered an up-and-coming figure in GOP ranks, was quoted as saying of Clinton: “The first two years of his term were one thing, but the rest of his presidency was tempered with moderation, and the nation benefited.”

Ryan’s remarks, it would seem, should shock the average grass-roots Republican who probably would remember that “the rest” of the Clinton presidency included a vast array of scandals—not the least of which was the Lewinsky affair that resulted in an enthusiastic effort by Republicans to impeach the president.

Now, however, that the national-level elite opinion makers are working to sway public sentiment in favor of a “bipartisan consensus” (as part of an effort to stir up a “centrist” third party movement in the upcoming presidential election), key GOP leaders are being turned into Clinton cheerleaders.

It’s as if they are encouraging Bill and Hillary Clinton to break with the Democratic Party, go “centrist” and pull the rug out from under Obama. To add further fuel to that possibility, note that The Washington Post recently headlined an Associated Press (AP) story, which was also circulated in other newspapers across America: “Democrats divided on Obama in 2012. Poll finds about half saying he should face nomination challenge.”

The story told of an AP poll claiming that 47 percent of Democrats actually believe the once popular incumbent president should be challenged. And evidently, Mrs. Clinton is the favorite among most of those Democrats fed up with Obama.

So while many “right wing” folks view the Clintons as anything but “centrist” and “very liberal” indeed, don’t forget that, for years, prior to his winning the presidency, the Clintons were major figures in the Democratic Leadership Council—a preeminent “centrist” force within Democratic ranks.

The terms “liberal,” “conservative” and “centrist” can mean just about anything when the elite media are defining them for the American public, especially in the course of attempting to manipulate a political action.

On Oct. 25, writing in the Post, much-touted “economist” Robert Samuelson joined the clamor for a “centrist” uprising. In a commentary entitled “Politics has lost its center of balance,” Samuelson wrote of the “mass discontent” in America, arising from the left-right divide. Liberals and conservatives are “too radical or unrealistic” and Samuelson emphasized the point that what he called “the center” is frustrated by such sharp-edged conflicts which, according to Samuelson, are dominated by ideologues who make “no room for compromise.”

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are too much in tune with “the base” (that is, the “liberals” hold sway in the Democratic Party and “conservatives” in the Republican Party) and not open to bipartisan centrist concerns—or so he says.

In Samuelson’s assessment, the 2010 congressional elections will not resolve what he calls the “stalemate” in American political affairs.

Although grassroots Americans fed up with politics as usual would love to see a genuine third party or independent uprising in America, it is vital that they are not fooled by this false entity being conjured up in the laboratoriesof the “Dr. Frankensteins” of the mass media and its big-money controllers.

The latest issue of AMERICAN FREE PRESS had hardly gone to press—describing an ongoing high-level scheme to launch a new “centrist” third party controlled by the “new world order” elite—when two more prominent New York Times columnists chimed in with the very rhetoric that America’s “most influential newspaper” has been hyping as part of the campaign to get the new party under way.

On Nov. 6, both Bob Herbert and Charles M. Blow —conventional “mainstream” pundits of the classic Times stripe—had side-by-side columns on the Times’s popular op-ed page, trumpeting the proposition that both the “liberal Democrats” and the “conservative Republicans” are politically, intellectually and, for all intents and purposes, morally bankrupt.

The nation is endangered, they wrote, unless there are solutions and saviors that emerge outside the conventional liberal-conservative paradigm to which Americans have become accustomed through the “two party” system that now prevails.

Writing in the Times, Herbert—in his “Tone-Deaf in DC” column—stated flatly:

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are offering voters the kind of change that they seem so desperately to want. . . .What voters want is leadership that will help them through an economic nightmare and fix a country that has been pitched into a state of sharp decline. They long for leaders with a clear and compelling vision of a better America and a road map for getting there. That leadership has long been AWOL. The hope in the tumultuous elections of 2008 was that it would come from Mr. Obama and the Democrats, but that hope, after just two years, is on life support. . . .The Democrats are in disarray because it’s a party that lacks a spine. The Republicans, conversely, fight like wild people whether they’re in the majority or not. What neither party is doing is offering a bold, coherent plan to get the nation’s economy in good shape and create jobs, to bring our young men and women home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to rebuild the education system in a way that will prepare the next generation for the great challenges of the 21st century . . . .

We now stand in the twilight of American moderation. We have retreated to our respective political corners and armed ourselves in an ideological standoff over the very meaning of America, having diametrically opposed interpretations of its past and visions for its future. Talking across the table has been reduced to yelling across the chasm. Welcome to the Great American Cleaving. . . . Instead of moving toward the middle, we are drifting toward the extremes. . . . That ripping sound you hear is the fabric of a nation.

It is true that both “major” parties are bankrupt and that the two-party system is corrupt. AMERICAN FREE PRESS and all honest independent voices have said that for years. However, from the fact that The New York Times is airing this idea on a regular basis, in commentaries coming from its key columnists, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the powerful network of billionaire families and closely interconnected financial interests that control the major print and broadcasting conglomerates (and likewise are interlocked with the private Federal Reserve money monopoly) has now decided to give Americans an ostensible alternative to the two major parties.

Predictably, the Times has been joined by its down-coast neighbor, The Washington Post, which has likewise been clamoring for some sort of “centrist” solution to Democratic-Republican gridlock. But it would be an alternative under the control of the very elements that now control the Democratic and Republican parties.

Note de Michel Collins Piper: "the Jews are actually quite prepared to hand the Republican Party to Sarah Palin and, at the same time, fracture the Democratic Party from within----and give the 2012 election to a "bipartisan fusion centrist" candidate. Palin will be painted as a screaming extremist (and quite correctly so) and the Democratic candidate (who may or may not be Barack Obama) will be painted as a "too liberal" type who will be "unable to govern." A nice merger between "moderate-conservative" Republicans and "moderate-liberal" Democrats will be offered up as the way to save America from the "extremes."

While there are many who believe that Obama is the candidate of the Jews and the New World Order and Global Communism, etc etc. I do not think it is as simple as that."

Regarding the nomination of Rand Paul for the republican party, even in French Quebec, the news broadcasts are explaining the Rand Paul victory by this "rebellion", i.e. people losing faith in traditional parties and voting for the "extremes". (Note that our news channels don't have a lot of time to comment international news, they make short analyses and conclusions.) As you said, a 3rd party could then be presented as "needed" in order to "save America from the extremes".

Mark Penn - From the U.S. to the U.K., new political windsThursday's elections in Britain could be a harbinger of what is likely to come to America in the not-too-distant future: new movements and even parties that shake up the political system. (...)even the most tradition-bound electoral systems are facing the pressures of rapid change made possible by modern communications. These movements may not win out of the gate, but they will become significant political factors. Generally, three triggers produce change in political systems: pent-up dissatisfaction usually brought on by a bad economy or a corruption scandal; ideological rigidity that leaves some voters cold; and an exceptional leader who crystallizes these feelings and turns them into action. (...) The second attempt was by independent tycoon Ross Perot. His voters were primarily concerned about reducing the size of government and the deficit (large aspects of today's Tea Party agenda). At its core, the movement behind Perot was anti-government, while Anderson voters were for restrained but activist government. Both efforts tried to seize on dissatisfaction with the economy and a system driven by partisanship. Neither had a leader dynamic enough to succeed. Both also rejected ideological extremes that were seen as too rigid and out of touch. Today, strong reassertions of ideological extremes are taking place in the Democratic and Republican parties; witness conservative and liberal primary challenges arising against incumbents. While the country is moving to the center and record numbers are registering as independents, the Republicans are effectively being driven, and pressured, by Sarah Palin, and the Democrats by MoveOn.org. (lire le reste...)The writer is chief executive of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. He was a pollster and adviser to Bill Clinton from 1995 to 2000 and previously did work for Rep. John Anderson and Ross Perot. He also worked for the British Labor Party in the 2005 election.